A Humble Beginning

Recently, we had to write an essay in my Russian class about our family history, and I found out a lot of things about where I come from. I thought it might be interesting for others as well, so I’d like to share it here. 

My whole family – my parents, my older brother and sister, and I – were all born in Uzbekistan, a country south of Russia, bordered by Kazakhstan and three other “stan” countries. I knew that my dad’s parents had come to Uzbekistan from Korea, but I didn’t know the circumstances.

To understand, a little bit of history is required here:

In the mid to late 19^th and early 20^th centuries, the Russian government really wanted the far east of Russia to be populated, so they offered land to Koreans. Because of this, a lot of Koreans immigrated and settled there. But when Stalin came to power in the 1920s, he mistrusted and disliked Koreans and found them to be guilty. It’s unclear as to what Koreans were actually guilty of, but under his command, they were to be deported from Russia to either Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan, and forbidden to return (the ban was lifted in 1956).

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So in 1937, government officials came to the town my grandparents (on my father’s side) were living at the time. They told all of the residents that they must come with them and to leave all of their things; that they weren’t needed. Completely unaware of what was about to happen, everyone boarded the carriages and left everything behind. My dad told me that his parents thought they’d be back shortly, but they stayed on that carriage for months, travelling the great distance from the far east to Uzbekistan, where they were dropped off and left on their own, without any guidance or instruction.

That is how my dad’s family came to live in Uzbekistan. Fast forward 23 years and Vyacheslav Nigay is born. He grows up in a family of six children, has a happy childhood filled with exciting stories of fist fights, and then grows up to earn three master’s degrees from three different countries. With his education, he becomes vice president of the Uzbekistan International Airport, where he later meets a woman by the name of Nodira. And you guessed  it, that’s my mom.

They had three kids – Evgenia, Arkadiy, and Natalia (me!) – and everything was good, until it wasn’t. A few years after I was born, at the very end of the  20^th century, the people of Uzbekistan began to reject all non-ethnic Uzbeks. Because my family is technically Korean, that meant us. Employers would not hire anyone who wasn’t completely Uzbek, and my dad, who held a very high ranking position in Uzbekistan, knew that it was time to move.

We moved to Russia, but in Russia, we were always treated as outsiders. So when we won the Green Card lottery, we came to America. According to my dad, all of us hid behind him when we stepped off the plane at JFK. It was a hard adjustment, especially for my parents who had to go to night school for a long time to learn English, but they say it was worth it. Because now they get to see their kids be happy and have a chance to be the people they want to be, with no one telling them that they can’t succeed.  

My dad sacrificed his career, the one he worked for for almost two decades and my parents left everything they knew behind to come to a land halfway across the world with only $100 in their pockets. And here we are now. Happy, healthy, and grateful for everything we have. Sometimes I get caught up in trivial problems and I think that my life is so hard, but now I carry my family’s journey with me. So if I don’t want to do something for myself, I do it for them. 

Families that wear denim together, stay together.

The World is At Your Fingertips

One of my dreams in life, as I’m sure it is for many others, is to travel the world. I’ve had this dream for as long as I can remember. My memory isn’t that great so like, the 5^th grade, but still, a pretty long time. Since the 5^th grade I’ve thought a lot about where I wanted to go and how I could get there. So for me, one of the most exciting things about going to college was the opportunity to study abroad.

Personally, I want to go abroad for a whole semester. There is a lot of planning that goes into it though, and last week I started figuring out the logistics. It seems so simple, yet it’s so complicated at the same time. I don’t know if it’s exactly the same for everyone and every major, but here’s what I did to start my study abroad process.

1.  Email advisor.

I had no idea where to start and the whole process seemed intimidating, so I started simple and e-mailed my advisor asking if he could point me in the right direction. He and told me that I could go online to find a program, or talk to someone in the engineering advising office in Hammond. I decided to do both.

2. Global PSU

This is the website for Penn State study abroad programs. Basically, when I met to meet with someone in person, he just showed me how to navigate and understand the website (which helped a lot, actually.)

§  Under the Going Abroad drop down menu at the top, select Program Search. It will take you to another page, where you can enter things that you want from your study abroad, such as country, major, language of instruction, etc.

§  This will give you, depending on how many criteria you entered, either an extensive or pretty short list of programs to choose from.

§  From there, click on the link and it’ll take you to an info page for the program that’ll tell you the approximate cost, a little bit about the University, prerequisites, and all of the necessary information you need to apply.

§  Note: One of the prerequisites is “class standing.” This is based on number of credits. Check the table below to find out yours.

3. Decide on a Program

For me, this was the hardest part (so far). I had to decide between London, Australia, and New Zealand, all English speaking, all great in their own way. I checked to make sure the universities I was considering offered the equivalent of the course I need to take next spring, and ultimately settled on Monash University in beautiful Melbourne, Australia.

4. Apply!

Before you can select courses, you have to be accepted into the program. To fill out the application, follow the steps provided on Global PSU. Keep in mind the application deadlines! They are usually about 6 months before the start of the semester you wish to go abroad for.

5. Select Your Courses

This part is tricky and I haven’t gotten to it yet, but from what I’ve been told study abroad students get second choice of courses. This means that it’s best to select more courses than you think you need, just in case some are full when the time comes, so you can maintain full-time enrollment (you are also allowed to take one online course offered by Penn State).

But how do you select courses? Great question. First, check the list of historical courses (ones that Penn State students have taken there before and are already approved). If the class you want is on that list, then you’re good. If not, you have to search for classes through the abroad university’s website, then go through a whole process of figuring out course equivalency and getting them approved. To do this, it’s probably helpful to meet with your advisor and the program coordinator (listed on the program’s info page).

6.  Get excited.

I can’t wait to get to this part!!! Hopefully there’s a blog written somewhere on how to pack when you’re going halfway around the world for 5 months…

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Let's Talk About Sex, Baby, Let's Talk About You and Me

I live in a special living option called the GLOBE, which is a place where people who are interested in international cultures and global events all live in the same place. I applied to live here not just because it looks kind of like a hotel and the individual bathrooms are pretty sweet, but because we come together at times to talk about issues that are important to us. This week, we talked about sex ed.

Source: Voices of Youth

 Personally, I’ve never given much thought to the importance of sexual education for children and young adults; perhaps I’ve even taken my own education on the topic for granted. I went to a Philadelphia public school and in health class we had units on everything from self-respect and consent to contraceptives and safe sex (they got rid of health due to budget cuts the year we were supposed to take care of egg babies L) Planned Parenthood even came in to give presentations, did free STD testing, and made sure that we all knew of the resources available to us. I can’t imagine going to a school where the topic was not talked about at all, but that is the situation in many places across the country and the world.

For the discussion, one article we read compared teen birth rates in 6 different countries – the U.S., Norway, Canada, Sweden, Germany, and Denmark. Unsurprisingly, out of all these countries, the U.S. had by far the highest teen pregnancy and birth rates, with 52.8 pregnancies and 33.8 births per 1000 teens ages 15-19. The next highest was Canada, with 16 births, while the lowest was 2.7 babies for every 1000 teens in Sweden.

The difference between all of these countries is how they go about educating their youth on sex. For example Norway, in this interesting video, talks about sex unabashedly.

Many of those developed countries with low birth rates start their education at a young age, teaching kids about respecting themselves and others. Then, when they get older, they start teaching about puberty and the changes bodies go through. And lastly, they talk about healthy relationships and how to engage in safe and consensual sex.

However, it is understandable that this can’t be done everywhere. The main reason? Religion. Culture and tradition play important roles as well, but a lot of the time they stem from religion. A really interesting part of the discussion was talking about whether sexual education was important enough to go through with, despite heavy opposition from religious groups. In America, a lot of the people who oppose sex ed in schools are immigrants, whose beliefs go against teaching kids about sex before marriage or for anything other than procreation.

But it’s impossible to shield adolescents from sex because it’s so prevalent in the media, so what happens if they have no knowledge of the dangers of sexually transmitted diseases and don’t use protection? Is there any way to find a balance between personal beliefs and keeping teens and pre-teens safe by making sure they are sexually aware and educated?

Source: Pinterest

It’s a really interesting conversation to have, because there are a lot of different viewpoints that come up when discussing sex ed. This involves cultural differences, personal beliefs, and recognizing the benefits that could come from teaching kids about sex and related things like self-confidence, awareness, consent, relationships, etc.

If you want to learn more about this topic or discuss it with your fellow Penn Staters, it'll definitely be worth it to check out Penn State’s first ever S.E.X. Week, sponsored by Open the Box this April. 

We Get Knocked Down, but We Get Up Again

Has something ever happened in your life that is really trivial in the grand scheme of things, but in the moment it feels like the end of the world? I’m sure it has for you, and it definitely has for me, the most recent time being this past Sunday when I happened to be on ANGEL and decided to check what I got on my math midterm.

The things is, when you’re used to doing well academically, doing so poorly on something is kind of incomprehensible. I sat in the HUB and stared at my screen for a while, refreshing the page hoping for some kind of mistake. When I realized that the red bar was there to stay, my mind  went blank. And when I got back to my room, I got into bed with all of my clothes on, pulled the covers over me, and just lay there. My friend came in, looked at me, and just asked me what flavor ice cream I wanted. (Answer: chocolate therapy).

I lay in bed for the rest of the day blasting Fall Out Boy, crying and laughing at the same time, and I fell asleep watching Grey’s Anatomy without changing into my pajamas. But between then and now, I’ve learned a few things: 

1) Failure is normal. Everyone experiences it at some point in their lives.

2) The only thing you can do is pick yourself up and move on. It does no good to dwell on the fact that you did poorly on something, and instead focus your energies on doing better next time.

My friend's tattoo.

3) The photo above is a tattoo of the geometric symbol for water. As lame as it sounds, it’s a reminder to go with the flow, but more importantly, that things don’t matter in the long run nearly as much as we think they do when we’re experiencing them in the moment. It’s a reminder that the future is out there and it does no good to dwell on the past. That includes failure.

So the next day when I got out of bed, instead of re-evaluating all of my life decisions and reconsidering my choice of major, I set goals. You learn from failure. Because if you fail, you’re doing something, and it’s a chance to try again.

Really, life is all about perspective. How you see failure is how you will go about your life, so why not see it as a second chance. I want to prove to myself that I am better than this one grade, this one failure, and that next time I come face to face with that 10 page beast that goes by the name of “Math Exam 2”, I will be ready.

So if you ever experience failure, it’s okay to be sad, that’s only natural. So lay in bed all day, eat great ice cream, and jam out to your favorite band. But when the sun comes up the next morning, remember that it’s a new day. New opportunities to be successful await you, so don’t let that one failure hold you back. 

Photo courtesy of Genius Quotes